This has been the longest month ever. Between the clusterfuck that is our political climate and these masked meat sacks whacking US citizens like it’s just acceptable to the insane snow storm we were hit with it seems the blows keep coming and I’m feeling not so cheery. Being trapped in my apartment with two out of control children has been testing my patience to the max and I’m going stir crazy for my routine and sense of normal. The kids being out of control is in large part my own fault since we went to a chocolate expo the day before the storm so they have been on a multi day sugar high- whoopsie.

We were told the entire time the storm was being forecasted that we were getting 18-24 inches. Per usual the weather channels were wrong but not in the direction they usually are. Exaggeration is their specialty so to see the 31 inches and realize it was worse than they expected was a blow. Normally I’m all for some time off from work but this weekend I truly couldn’t afford to lose the number of hours I did. I had a double scheduled Sunday and another shift for Monday that has been cancelled as well. I know absolutely no one would be going in there during a blizzard but I could have really used those hours clocked in towards my paycheck.

My husband managed to get himself suspended from work for an entire week without pay. I don’t share that to shame the dude but much like myself his mouth got him in trouble. The last time I spoke out of line to an employer I ended up unemployed for 5 months so we are lucky that he just got a slap on the wrist. But factor in the unpaid suspension, the 15+ hours of work I lost because of the storm, and my car’s stock tires being on their way out it’s just some on brand for me bullshit.

I’m glad he at least still has the job and these are all temporary inconveniences but it would be nice if for once the financial shit was spread out a little more. It seems life comes at me in bad shit with sets of 3 different crappy things. Seeing the price of tires for newer nice cars made me miss driving hunks of metal that belonged in junkyards as they are much cheaper to maintain (even when on their death beds). I should be grateful to have the thing but when I really think about how bad I’m getting smoked on my interest rate I do die just a little bit inside.

With my tail between my legs I dusted off my sublimation printer, heat press and went crawling back to customers who had asked me to make them shirts over the past six months since abandoning my business. I’m often asked why I would walk away from a business that generated more income than I make at my current job and I wish I had some profound answer. The biggest issue was the amount of work it actually took to constantly be chasing sales. Often times over the last five years I’ve compared it to supporting my fentanyl addiction and being an active drug addict required less effort.

Constantly having to be on social media and in sales mode was draining and the looming fear of homelessness if sales didn’t come in wasn’t for the faint of heart. In 2023 I had attempted to “close” for a year. I didn’t even close, I just stopped taking retail orders and instead worked for free doing bare minimum priced wholesale orders for another small shop. Foolish move on my end, I’m aware. I failed at owning a business in so many ways it’s not even funny. That’s going to be my next big topic to cover because I’m full of failures from these last five years that I hope sharing with others can prevent them from making the same mistakes.

And because I lost all my shame with my first full body internal strip search, I’m shamelessly plugging my old website I never deleted in an effort to potentially get a pity sale or at least some traffic to the site I abandoned this summer.

https://baby-daddy-brands.square.site/